Martin van Bruinessen

Martin van Bruinessen (* July 10, 1946 in Schoonhoven ) is a Dutch sociologist.

He studied at the University of Utrecht, Physics, Mathematics ( completion 1971) and then anthropology and sociology. Between 1974 and 1976 he conducted many field investigations among the Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey. In 1978 he presented his dissertation Agha, Shaikh and State. On the Social and Political Organization of Kurdistan its most important work before. This soon became a standard work on comparative social research, although it was not published until the German translation as revised in 1989 in the book trade. Van Bruinessen owner describes the socio- religious structures of the Kurds.

1977 van Bruinessen started at the Utrecht University studies on Ottoman history. In 1988 the work of Evliya Çelebi in Diyarbakır. 1978 to 1981, he traveled frequently to Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan. In addition to the Kurds and Turkey, he worked on from 1982 a lot with Indonesia, where he remained for six years. There he taught at the University of Yogyakarta sociology.

Starting in 1994, taught van Bruinessen Kurdish and Turkish at the University of Utrecht. 1996 to 1997 he was a visiting professor for Kurdish Studies at the Free University of Berlin.

Writings (selection )

• & Hendrik Boeschoten: Evliya Çelebi in Diyarbakır: The Relevant Section of the Seyahatname edited with translation, commentary and introduction, ( Evliya Çelebi = 's: Land and people of the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century A corpus of partial editions, Vol 1. ), Brill, Leiden, 1988, XVII 270 pp., ISBN 9004081658
• The ethnic identity of the Kurds, in: Ethnic groups in the Republic of Turkey, compiled and edited by Peter Alford Andrews with Rüdiger Benninghaus, supplements to the Tubingen Atlas of the Middle East, Series B, No. 60, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1989 S. 613-621.
• Agha, Sheikh and State - Politics and society of Kurdistan, ( German translation of the dissertation of 1978, with revisions), Edition Parabolis, Berlin, 1989, 541 pp., ISBN 3884022598
• Islamic state or state Islam? Fifty years of state- Islam relations in Indonesia, in: Ingrid Wessel (ed. ), Indonesia at the end of the 20th century, Abera, Hamburg, 1996, pp. 19-34.
• & Stefano Allievi (ed.): Producing Islamic knowledge: transmission and dissemination in Western Europe, Routledge, 2010, 196 pp., ISBN 978-0-415-35592-6.
• & Julia Day Howell (ed.): Sufism and the 'Modern' in Islam, Routledge, 2007, 367 pp., ISBN 978-1-85043-854-0.